<i> Sayonara </i> to the Single Life : Logistics: The wedding will be simple and short. But the celebration involves a cast of thousands and a cost of millions.

In silent procession, the royal couple will enter a sanctuary on the Imperial Palace grounds housing Amaterasu, the sacred sun goddess of Japan and mythical matriarch of the 2,600-year-old Royal Family. There, in a dimly lit chamber, witnessed by only one attendant, the Chief Ritualist, the Crown Prince of Japan will read a matrimonial pledge.

“I have come before you with the Crown Princess to pledge we will vow unchanging love,” he will say, adding a plea for protection. She, swathed in a multicolored, 12-layer ceremonial court kimono weighing more than 30 pounds, in a long black wig and powdered face, will stand in silence.

Sacred sake will be sipped, bows made. Then the couple will exit the sanctuary for a public appearance--signaling to all the world on Wednesday that the 126th heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne, Crown Prince Naruhito, 33, has at long last wed the woman of his dreams, former diplomat Masako Owada, 29.

As royal weddings go, the rites will be solemn, simple and short, lasting only 15 minutes.

But preparation for the event and nine subsequent related rites, plus the royal couple’s scheduled parade, has involved a cast of thousands--chamberlains and maids-in-waiting, chefs and seamstresses, musicians, police, priests and politicians.

Tens of millions of dollars are being spent. Security alone for the 30-minute, 2.6-mile parade from the Imperial Palace to the Akasaka Palace, where the newlyweds will reside, is expected to cost $15.45 million, or $515,000 a minute.

The parade involves 30,000 police officers busy with such measures as yanking out every vending machine along the route to safeguard the royal heads from getting bonked with a soda can. (Someone did throw a rock at the current emperor and empress during their wedding parade 34 years ago in an open horse-drawn carriage; no one wants a similar problem to occur on their watch this time.)

The police have also prodded most of the shopkeepers along the route to shut their shops during the parade. Despite the bonanza of business likely from the 530,000 expected spectators, most reluctantly complied with police requests for “self-restraint.”

Millions are expected to watch the events on television. But, while sizable, the royal wedding audience is not expected to break the all-time record set by pop idol Hiromi Go, whose 1987 wedding was viewed by 47.5% of Japanese households.

To feed the 2,700 guests at six palace banquets over three days, more than 13,000 sea bream, sweet fish, salmon, mullet roe and abalone reportedly will be served, not to mention the hundreds of dozens of eggs purchased for sweet rolled omelet and thick custard soup, thousands of bottles of sake and hundreds of chickens.

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa is expected to deliver the first speech at the first banquet on June 15 after Emperor Akihito gives an opening welcome. Akio Morita, Sony Corp. chairman, and Tatsuro Toyota, Toyota Motors president, were invited. So were kabuki star Utaemon Nakamura and composer Dan Ikuma, as well as Cabinet members, parliamentary leaders, judges and a host of local officials.

Conspicuously absent from the guest list are foreigners. Their attendance will be limited to the ambassadors to Japan and their spouses on the last banquet of the last day, June 17, said Hojo Nakajima, the Imperial Household Agency’s Vice Grand Master of Ceremonies. However, the Crown Prince is planning to host a tea and invite foreign guests then, Nakajima said.

The entire affair seems painstakingly choreographed down to the minute with schedules that read:

6:48 a.m. The Crown Princess enters the Imperial Palace’s front gate.

6:58 a.m. She purifies herself, dresses, is coiffed and made up.

8:51 a.m. The ceremonial doors are opened to the sanctuary.

8:52 a.m. Offerings are made of food and woven silk.

9:01 a.m. The Chief Ritualist announces the rites will start.

And so on.

The various rites are not rooted in the mists of antiquity, despite their florid names (Rite to Apprise the Imperial Ancestors of the Wedding) and royal history dating back more than two millennia. In fact, the rites were enshrined in law only 83 years ago.

And it was only in 1900 that the practice of marrying before Shinto gods was introduced to Japan.

That’s when the Taisho Emperor wed in a Shinto rite credited to an “inventor” thought to have been influenced by the Western custom of exchanging vows before God in a church.

Before that, no one seems sure how people married because scant data exists, say experts on weddings in Japan. (Most likely, scholars say, it was a simple cup of sake in the home with immediate family.)

After a dentist named Takashima who had studied in the United States became the first commoner to wed in the newfangled rite in 1902, the practice of Shinto weddings gradually spread. He also threw a lavish reception at the Imperial Hotel, laying the groundwork for the Shinto ceremony / Western party pattern that prevails today.

Gradually, in characteristic fashion, the Japanese added foreign color and ultimately created a hybrid ritual melding East and West unique to Japan.

Today, the typical wedding in Japan is a three-hour affair that begins with a somber Shinto rite offering sacred sake to the gods and ends with the couple presenting themselves in glittering Western party clothes surrounded by smoke, lasers and blinking disco lights.

Kudan Kaikan wedding hall’s latest offering is a rice cake-pounding ceremony, which symbolizes a congratulatory mood and costs $1,000 for the 15-minute performance by three people. Such added features have helped send the cost of weddings in Japan soaring.

According to Sanwa Bank, the average cost to begin a marriage today is $74,074. About $30,300 goes toward the wedding and reception, $25,000 for the couple’s new furniture and the rest for honeymoon and engagement expenses. That figure has nearly doubled since 1977 and accounts for the estimated $37-billion wedding business in Japan.

But many of today’s young couples would have it no other way.

“I was really satisfied. Even though it lasted three hours, it seemed short to me,” said Minako Fujii, 21, who married last year in a typical mix of East and West at the Tama Hime Gen, or Queen’s Palace, in Chiba outside Tokyo. Fujii began her ceremony in a brilliant kimono of red, orange and gold, then changed into the most traditional of outfits: a pure white wedding kimono, 4-pound lacquered wig and white satin hat said to cover the woman’s horns of anger and jealousy.

As politicians, colleagues and friends gave speeches and sang karaoke, Fujii rushed through two more changes, attended by three women who reapplied her makeup, redid her hair and disrobed and redressed her in a pearl tiara, diamond pendant and full-length party gown in 12 minutes.

Although she and her husband were initially hesitant about the gaudy options they chose, such as descending from the ceiling in a gondola, “when I actually did it, it felt great,” she said.

Their choice was pricey: $51,000, although they got a discount because he works at the wedding hall.

Some wedding experts say such lavish weddings will begin to decline, particularly amid the prolonged economic downturn.

Still, the wedding of the current emperor and empress 34 years ago set off the trend toward more lavish ceremonies. And some entrepreneurs here are scrambling to do the same with the upcoming royal rites. One Tokyo dressmaker has began selling a memorial ball gown decorated with 800 pearls--Owada’s trademark--for $138,000. A memorial luggage set, studded with 1,500 diamonds, is being offered for $925,000.

The Kudan Kaikan has created a rough copy of the 35-pound, 12-layer ceremonial court kimono Owada will wear and is ready to rent it out for $11,000 per day--10 times more than the normal white wedding kimono.

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Megumi Shimizu, researcher in The Times Tokyo Bureau, contributed to this report.